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Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Abortion and Civil Life

I am pro-life, and I am so because Holy Scripture forbids murder. The often overlooked aspect of the abortion debate is that it is part of a larger body of questions involving what human beings are. We bear the image of God in a way unique in all of creation. Because of this, we are called by God to treat all people, both the born and the unborn, with love.

In light of this, I am often amazed at how the key issues of civil life polarize people who, other than on the hot topics of the day, pretty much agree with one another on what is considered to be a permissible way to conduct one’s life. This is especially true in the area of sexual ethics. Take the issue of sex outside of marriage, for instance. It is common nowadays for people who are dating to live together. And yet the same people often will take a dogmatic stance against abortion. Often this is a result of growing up in a morally conservative environment which, here in the South, usually involves growing up in the church to some degree. Certainly, abortion is a much more serious issue than sleeping with someone to whom you aren’t married. But the root issue is the same. Both the woman who aborts her baby and the person who sleeps with someone to whom they aren’t married say, “I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. What I want is more important than whether it is good or evil.” Both sins violate the image of God in a person, seeing that person as an object to be used according to one’s own pleasure. It is only reasonable, then, that an abortion culture should grow out of a sexually immoral culture. The thing that the sexually immoral person doesn’t understand is that once you’ve headed down that road, you can’t stop the bus. You can’t say, “I only want this level of immorality to be allowed in society, but anything beyond this shouldn’t be allowed.” Sin is like the snowball rolling downhill - once it’s started rolling, you’ll eventually end up with an avalanche, unless you are able to stop the whole thing. And like an avalanche, it’s much easier to stop when it’s just a snowball.